Eason Jordan, the news chief of CNN, unburdened himself of some horrific secrets recently and is the object of withering attack. In an article on the facing page on April 11, Mr. Jordan said that on trips to Baghdad, he learned despicable facts about the regime of Saddam Hussein that CNN could not report without endangering its Iraqi staff. Among those facts: a CNN cameraman was tortured by government thugs; Uday Hussein, the dictator's son, said he intended to murder two brothers-in-law and King Hussein of Jordan; and an aide to Uday said his front teeth had been yanked out with pliers by Uday's henchmen, who told him not to wear dentures so he would remember never to upset his boss. To have reported any of this, Mr. Jordan wrote, would have endangered his local employees and their families. To read the rest of this commentary, see New York Times

With his "preemptive" war against Iraq, U.S. President George Bush took a gamble of historic proportions. But what is far less acknowledged is that the same is true for the U.S. media.

American news reporters and major media outlets used to command great respect around the globe. However, in the age of "embedded" reporters, how much longer will that be the case? There have certainly been journalistic heroes with an American passport. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, for example, are part of the global media lore. With their courage and relentlessness, they took down the Nixon Administration during the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s. For the entire article, see Japan Today